CREATION BY EVOLUTION 



or old suns. Along with these evolutionary changes in the 

 general character of the individual sun there is a parallel 

 evolution of the elements. Thus it appears that evolution in 

 the most minute units is definitely linked with evolution in 

 the largest units. One evolution is obviously causally related 

 to the other. 



This conclusion leads me to venture upon the bolder state- 

 ment thiat all evolution is in the end one vast universal 

 coordinated process. We may be able to view one or two 

 of its various aspects as though they were set apart from the 

 rest, but any adequate study of one phase of evolution sooner 

 or later leads to the conviction that it cannot be understood 

 as a self-contained process or mechanism but can be made 

 intelligible only by considering its relation to other processes 

 or mechanisms. In the end w^e are inevitably driven to the 

 conclusion that all nature is an organized system and that 

 whatever happens in one realm is related to all other realms, 

 and thus to the whole. Such a view as this leaves one with 

 a feeling of awe in the presence of that vast unity we 

 call Nature. There is room here, if anywhere, for a 

 scientific concept of Deity, a central immanent power back 

 of all these co5rdinated activities, from the smallest to the 

 greatest. 



If, as the astronomers, physicists, and chemists tell us, all 

 lifeless nature is engaged in a ceaseless swing of intense 

 activities; if the sun is growing older and changing its char- 

 acter with every succeeding day; if the earth has had its ups 

 and downs, with numerous radical changes of climate; if, as 

 the rocks tell us, life originated prior to a long series of these 

 great environmental upheavals, it is indeed difficult to believe 

 that living organisms, the most plastic of all natural units, 

 should have remained fixed amidst the vast flux of world 

 changes. In fact, there is between the records of geologic 



[362] 



